CVE-2026-80825 wifi: mt76: mt7925: ensure tx headroom in usb_sdio_tx_prepare_skb
A missing headroom check in the mt7925 WiFi driver causes a kernel panic when bridging wired traffic to a USB WiFi AP, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-80825?
CVE-2026-80825 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 4 Sep 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
wifi: mt76: mt7925: ensure tx headroom in usb_sdio_tx_prepare_skb
mt7925_usb_sdio_tx_prepare_skb() pushes a TX descriptor and a USB header onto every skb and assumes the headroom for them is already there. That holds for locally generated traffic, where mac80211 reserves hw->extra_tx_headroom, but forwarded frames are sent through ieee80211_8023_xmit(), which does not reserve it. Bridge a wired interface to an mt7925u AP and the first forwarded frame that arrives short panics the kernel:
skbuff: skb_under_panic: len:415 put:4 tail:0x19b end:0x640 dev:wlan1 kernel BUG at net/core/skbuff.c:212! Call trace: skb_panic+0x58/0x60 (P) skb_push+0x58/0x60 mt7925_usb_sdio_tx_prepare_skb+0xf8/0x1b8 [mt7925_common] mt76u_tx_queue_skb+0xa0/0x1f8 [mt76_usb] __mt76_tx_queue_skb+0x54/0xe8 [mt76] mt76_txq_schedule.part.0+0x204/0x478 [mt76] mt76_txq_schedule_all+0x50/0x80 [mt76] mt792x_tx_worker+0x68/0x100 [mt792x_lib] __mt76_worker_fn+0x84/0x150 [mt76]
Whether a given setup hits it depends on how much headroom the ingress netdev leaves in its rx skbs. Reproduced on a Raspberry Pi 5 bridging onboard ethernet to a Netgear A9000; originally reported on an MT7986 router running OpenWrt. Nick Morrow's testing on a Pi 4 (bcmgenet), which leaves more headroom, helped narrow the trigger to the ingress path.
The same bug was fixed on mt7921 by commit 98c4d0abf5c4 ("mt76: mt7921: don't assume adequate headroom for SDIO headers"), but mt7925 was copied from mt7921 without the fix. Add the same guard here.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-80825?
How do I fix CVE-2026-80825?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2026-80825 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-80825 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2026-80825, GHSA-82xc-6pqj-mvc4, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-80825.